No. You cannot patent something that isn’t new or useful, you can’t patent an idea, and you can’t patent something that’s good only for using “special nuclear material or atomic energy in an atomic weapon.” You CAN patent “any new and useful process, machine, manufacture, or composition of matter, or any new and useful improvement thereof.”

If you are inventing something, you need to make sure that it doesn’t already exist.

Okay, I now have a better idea about why patents are so important and can be used for so many things. How do I find them?

There are many free and paid sources of patents. They cover different places and years, and each offers some advantages. All of the ones below are free, except the Derwent Innovations Index, which the library has.

Patentscope includes patents and applications from all members of the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), about 150 countries (including the U.S.). It will also translate patents into seven languages from English, or from those languages into English (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, German, and French).